Coming back from my appointment this morning Moira and I were both craving donuts - which I realize isn’t a craving, more a “state of being” for me. But when we cut trans fats, we made donuts a very rare treat and with a house closing in less than 3 weeks, I didn’t want to spent the money either. Yes, I know, it’s just a couple dollars but IT ADDS UP and it’s the principle of the thing.

SO we came home and made cinnamon rolls! Haha, those are MUCH healthier, right? But we used real butter (no trans fats) and “organic” brown sugar someone gave us, so the marketing people would call these “healthy cinnamon rolls.”

Here is the recipe we used but we did it by hand, the bread maker is out in the garage and I was too lazy to go get it. Yes… I realize how odd that sounds, too lazy to get it so we made it by hand? I’m just use to doing bread by hand now.

The kids just helped me roll them out (note to self, do not leave Bennett unattended for even a split second with a table of cinnamon rolls being made - after I started spreading the butter on the dough, he took the rolling pin to it to help roll some more.)

I’m struck again by how much better I am feeling because I just made cinnamon rolls with four kids! AND fed them lunch, did a lesson with Christopher and my kitchen is clean! (Clean being relative, but it’s really pretty clean thanks to Jenny’s visit when she cleaned and my resolution to keep it that way while Kit’s at work - he cleans when he comes home, trying to make that less necessary by cleaning myself. )

It feels good to have energy again.

SO, kids, now it’s storytime and NAPS for toddlers and quite time for you big kids. Then I promised you hot chocolate (though the snow is melting) and cinnamon rolls.

Bennett got a hold of this party blower the kids picked up at a friend’s party a few weeks ago. He thought it incredibly amusing to blow it at his mother and watch her jump back in (mock) surprise. As you can plainly see.

The very interesting part of this for me, as we’re approaching a significant milestone for us as a family and Bennett in particular, is that we posted a similar movie to this a couple of years ago. We couldn’t help ourselves, tickling Bennett the week he came off of oxygen.

We have come such a very long way.

Heidi, standing at the stove stirring a pot, exclaimed, “Oh my gosh! He’s reading my butt!”

Heidi was standing in her hand-me-down yoga pants. The pink ones that spell “PRINCESS” across her seat. She did not buy these, I assure you.

Bennett was standing behind her, poking each letter, calling it by name. He got all the way to the E when Heidi realized what he was up to.

Heidi would like to defend herself by stating - these pants are very comfortable, they were hand-me-downs, I do NOT wear them out of the house and under NO CIRCUMSTANCES WILL OUR GIRLS EVER BE ALLOWED TO WEAR ANY CLOTHING WITH STATEMENTS ON THEIR REAR ENDS!! Which probably means now I have to get rid of my pink yoga pants…

OH, and normally we seek to avoid use of the word “butt” but Bennett surprised me and it came out. Mo says “bum” and Christopher says “bottom” but when I got poked in the rear, “butt” just came to mind…

My parents live on this street and we like to take walks down the road as it runs along the river. Tonight I snapped some pictures of the homes we pass - starting with my favorite:

My parents’ place:

Kit and the older three kids enjoying the river view, and getting a little too close to the edge for my comfort:

I’m getting the kids to bed solo tonight: Heidi’s at the Smoothing the Way meeting. It’s getting close to lights out time, and Bennett hasn’t napped at all today.

The kids are playing, drawing, running around, and generally making mischief right up to the last minute, so I announce to the kids, “Lights out in ten minutes!” Bennett, of course, doesn’t get “ten minutes” yet, so I look at him and say, “Bennett? Are you tired yet?”

Bennett stops drawing mid-line, takes off his glasses, places them in the spot I always put them for bedtime and stumbles over to me with his arms in the air. I scoop him up, and he’s asleep before I get him to his bed.

Unexpected behavior, but not unwelcome. Now to get the other kids down.

I hope your bedtime is as pleasant and unexpected as mine is turning out to be.

Heidi addition: Back from my meeting. This afternoon Mo was asking if it was naptime because she was tired. I said, “Sure, Moira, you can go nap.” Bennett, in the other room, overheard me and I walked in to see him taking off his glasses, placing them in the window ledge, and walking off to bed. I called after him, “Bennett, you don’t have to take a nap!” and he came back and grabbed his glasses and resumed playing. So weird! And cute!

We came back from Kansas with so many pictures it’s unreal (even for Thadens) and a great set of picture frames & mirrors, compliments of the grandparents. I’m just now settling on which photos to put up - here they are.

The vote below really has been fun for us to read, thanks for everyone that posted their website and their “vote” - I knew some of you were reading, but I think in our head we’re still just writing for the kids and our families. I love our blog, I love that we have such a detailed record of Bennett’s NICU time and Emy’s entire pregnancy and first year and so much of the kids’ lives. It’s been a family journal in a way we never envisioned when we started years ago. But honestly we didn’t think that anyone else would be reading along with us still… we thought the readership would lose interest once Bennett got home and the NICU updates ended, since we started this specifically for NICU updates. Of course we thought we were going to stop blogging then and look what happened. It took on a life of its own.

Anyway, thank you for being willing to comment and let us know who you are. We’re happy we can provide some amusement in your day! I’m going to keep bumping the vote up so anyone stopping by can say hi. Of course feel free to comment on any post.

Sometimes I wonder if they practice being this cute, or if it just comes naturally to them?

Moving Past? What’s that supposed to mean? Moving past… a slow truck?

Hold your horses. I’ll get to it, okay?

I.

Sitting in the foyer at church and preparing my lesson, I was across from an acquaintance who asked where my kids were. I was a little confused until he explained that I always had a child with me, and today I was sitting down uncharacteristically. Ah! The kids were mostly at home, I explained, either coming off of a virus or trying to avoid one with their sick mom. He was being friendly, and I realized that he opened the door to some polite chit-chat. I’m not really in to most guy-type conversation starters (unlike the fellows checking their cell phones through the meetings for scores that would correlate to their fantasy football teams — I kid you not), so I went with the only thing I really know.

Noting his baby in the car seat at his feet, I asked, “How old’s your son getting?” Perfect. A nice slow ball right across the plate. He swings, and the chit-chat moves to kids. I ask if his 10-month-old is crawling yet, and he says, yes and cruising and that sort of thing. Not that he was in any rush for his boy to start walking around. And, perhaps feeling a little twinge of competitive parenting, he quickly explains that he had a conversation with a pediatric nurse who explained that the longer kids crawl, the better it is for their brains — all that left/right coordination getting those little bodies in motion is, in fact, really good for their little brains. So, he was in no hurry and I commended him for that.

I start to tell him about Bennett as a little one: the time he decided to start rolling around with no warning, even though he was still on oxygen. He would spin across the floor, wrapping himself up in his oxygen tubing, and I would have to unravel him, and here I’m getting into it, doing the arm motions of someone pulling on a rope hand over hand, and we’re thinking this is a pretty funny thing to hear, and then the reality of the context hits me, though I don’t let it show.

My boy couldn’t breathe without oxygen support. If I took him off the O2, he would slowly suffocate to death. There’s the context. But we all survived, and to look at Bennett now is sort of surreal, especially if you overlay the dire predictions that haunted us from that 12th week on.

But thinking about a kid coiling himself up in his own oxygen tubing is funny, even at the time, but at the time I think we would have beaten up ourselves over laughing at it.

Moving past the reality of the time, we have the reality of now, and man that little kid did some really funny things. I like laughing about it. I feels good to be able to — to let myself.

II.

When we moved to Texas, and our new friends were getting to know us, Heidi would talk about her family and such, but I tended to stay fairly quiet about mine. This isn’t odd behavior for me by any stretch. Ask my dad: my formative years are often best not spoken of. A real conversation killer. That said, someone would eventually ask something about my mother, is she going to come and visit when the new baby was born or whatever, and I would respond, “Oh, no. She’s dead,” just like that.

Their mouths would drop open, and you could almost see the thought process form, “I just said the most insensitive thing in the world; he must think I’m some kind of insensitive clod.” Yes, they thought with semicolons.

I would quickly let them know that I was young when it happened, and it’s perfectly all right: I had plenty of time to work it all out. I think our friends believed me, after all, they remain our friends.

My mother died the same year I started college. I was sixteen. I wore the pager that would buzz when they had a donor liver on its way. I drove her to the hospital when it was time. She died a few months later at that same hospital — Baylor. The same place Bennett was born.

III.

Losing a parent is one of the worst things some people can imagine — a close second to losing a child. It’s a splash of ice-cold water on the psyche that shocks people right out of their social comfort zone and into another place they never want to find themselves standing.

That’s part of what I was thinking with my recollection of Bennett tangling himself up across the floor. My family often stands in the middle of a time warp. On the outside, we’re just about as normal as can be, notwithstanding the glasses. On the inside, we’ve spent a great deal of time coming to terms with mortality and the tug between the frailty of life and the strength of the spirit. Though we have never actually buried a child, the consideration isn’t as shocking to us as it used to be.

We get up and go to sleep with the sun. We cuddle and read. We sit together and watch cartoons. We eat way too few vegetables and far too much sugar. We straddle our past and look toward our future, and we’re truly happy.

Singing and Dancing to SuperWhy, the kids’ current favorite show. ~5MB

You can really see what Heidi’s talking about when Bennett starts dancing on his toe. Oh and gratuitous cuteness from Emy at the end. Make sure you stick around for that.

This is what Heidi makes me do when I should be working. : ]

Click on “Read More” there to see the rest of the results.
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This is sort of a roundup post.

Heidi’s sister had her third baby yesterday. To mark the occasion, we took the kids down to visit their cousins while their mom was recuperating at the hospital (uneventful birth with a midwife at that hospital, by the way — everything turned out just fine). Bonus that grandma was also visiting to help out for the birth.

Christopher and Mo went with Heidi to go an visit, and I’m happy to report that, not only did they get to hold the new baby, they both did so perfectly with support for her little bum and head just like they’ve been taught. I suppose that makes sense, though: They’ve both had plenty of experience with new babies around here, haven’t they? I stayed behind at their home with the babies and had a lovely time of it.

When everybody came back, we loaded up all the cousins (two minivans, natch) and headed out to the Tarrant Co. Duck Pond. Apparently this is THE duck pond. All others must be pale imitations. The kids had fun alternately throwing handfuls of bread and jellybeans at the ducks, and Bennett didn’t climb over the chains into the water once! Heidi was stressing this, as we didn’t pack a change of clothes, but I reminded her that we live in Texas and it’s summer. Strip the boy down and let him run around a diaper, if need be. That’s just fine around here. Between the ducks, minnows, grackles, squirrels, and a dreadnaught of a goose our meager helpings of bread found ample consideration.

Now, I haven’t posted pictures of the event. You would be right to ask why. We didn’t pack a camera. And the one professional photographer was in the hospital, and the other was taking pictures, but I’m not going to be able to get to her camera until Tuesday. I expect they’re cute, but the waiting is making me anxious.

Funny thing, though. While we were at the pond, an independent film crew was shooting a movie. One of the folks on the crew, taking a break, decided Bennett was cute and started snapping his picture. Here’s the weird part: She managed to take a picture of his face. No, really! In most of our pictures of Bennett, he’s running away or in the process of doing so, but apparently she got a few of him facing the camera, though still running, of course. We gave her our email address, and we’ll be seeing those images before too long, we hope.

I’m glad we went. Though it was only a trip to Fort Worth, it was kind of like a mini-vacation road trip for us. Nice way to break up what is normally a hard day of the week for me.

I’m remiss for not mentioning this before now, but the kids’ Nana came through in a big way for Emy’s birthday. Nancy, if you’re reading this, Emy loves her Nanny doll. See?

Thank you very much! I love that you gave it brown eyes. All the kids noticed that thoughtful detail.

And last thing. Heidi made up a batch of her cereal toffee concoction, and spread it out to cool on a sheet of parchment. It didn’t last long, however. She and I managed to eat most of it before bedtime. Much of it was gone before it was even cool. Couldn’t help notice that it looked like something in it’s mostly-gone state, however. Ah yes:

Ireland was delicious.

So I checked out a visitor’s blog yesterday and was really impressed. And I was introduced to a new word, Lactivism. Wikipedia has a good definition if you follow that link.

I understand not all women are able to breastfeed, but Heidi can and does, and I think it’s a beautiful thing. Let me show you.

This is one of the first pictures taken of us as parents. Critter’s latched on.

Here’s the first time she was able to nurse Bennett in the NICU. He was three months old by this time .

Emiline gets latched on at the birth center.

And Mo’s clearly comfortable with her acrobatic nursing.

And finally, here’s Mo (age 2), wanting to be like Mommy.

I love my family.

Oh, and Heidi has my blessing here. She picked out the pictures!

We made it to McKinney with plenty of time this morning. We were the first guests to arrive, in fact, and that was good. It gave Mo some much-needed transition time before the other kids arrived, not that the transition time did all that much good. She still required, if not physical contact from a parent at all times, no less than two feet in proximity to a parent at all times. Once the camera guy showed up, us dads took the kids across to the neighbor’s house.

First off, that was fun — hanging out with another home school dad. Second off, the dad is a creative director for his company, and I could relate to him on that level, too. (Random Kit fact: I was an Art director (or something like it) for a number of enterprises during the dot.com brouhaha.) The nice lady who opened up her yard to us had a daughter hanging out with her. I didn’t think much of it at first: The girl was about Christopher’s age. Then I saw her son who was about 8. Then her teenage daughter came out, and it clicked. Here was another homeschool family, and right across the street from our hosts for the morning. I mentioned to her that this was a nice change for us. Many people have been noting Christopher’s age and remarking how we must be getting ready to send him off to school. It’s about all I can do to not laugh in their faces. They never seem to know exactly how to react when they face the obvious contradiction of me telling them about our homeschooling. Here’s how it breaks down.

Kit’s a nice guy — really down to earth.
He just told me he’s homeschooling.
Christopher is a delightful, well-mannered child and not at all socially awkward.
They have four kids.

And right about then their heads explode, or at least their preconceptions about homeschooling. Awkward stammering with long pauses follow as if we just announced that we’re contagious or something. But we didn’t have to do that here. And more and more our little circle of friends is becoming densely populated by other homeschooling families. It’s a nice change.

So there we were, talking a little shop, when I see what must be the clumsiest hummingbird ever flailing around a tree, or a cicada finding a place to land. I get closer and it turns out to be the latter, and I point it out to the other homeschool dad. This starts to draw a crowd, and the nice lady’s son fetches a bug net and captures the cicada and suggests they feed it to their pet tortoise who lives in the bushes.

“Oh? You have a turtle?” I ask.

“A tortoise,” the youngest daughter politely corrects. Of course. Because this particular reptile is completely land-dwelling, and these homeschool kids know the difference. Before they feed the insect to the turtle tortoise, our hostess gathers the kids around for a brief lecture on turtles and tortoises, lets them hold the critter, has them wash their hands because of the sleight risk of salmonella — the whole spiel. Not only did they get a playdate, but they got a science lesson, too. I love this lifestyle!

Well, not everyone got the science lesson, because the nice lady fetched out a bubble table and a half dozen giant bubble wands. Bennett was merrily playing in the sudsy tub up to his elbows (and all over his shirt, hair, pants…) while Mo was spinning around making bubbles at a dizzying pace.

Let’s see, Christopher was introduced to tetherball, there were slides and swings, and that was just the older kids’ experience. From what Heidi tells me, Emy was a total charmer and will very likely be on TV again for this family’s blanket venture. If we see it, we’ll get it posted for you to coo over.

Incidentally, the camera guy is a homeschooler, too.

On the way home, we crashed Ikea for lunch and to grab a new dish set. We’re letting the kids start using the glassware now, and we anticipate fumbles, so we hit a sale and are now prepared with replacements. For lunch, Heidi and I sat near the kids’ section feeding Emy, and the three older kids all sat at a table, by themselves, ate their lunch, and didn’t dump anything out on the table or floor (not purposefully, anyway — C dumped his soda, but he also cleaned it up). I was so proud of them. We all went out to eat, and the kids were so well behaved, that I’m seriously considering trying such a thing again in the near future.

Heidi made a pie, Bennett dumped out a container of nutmeg… let’s see… what else?

Oh! Emy wanted in the dishwasher and couldn’t get it open so Bennett opened it for her. He also opens the fridge door for her so she can sit in there. They are now partners in crime.

We had another run-in with the fire ants and Bennett. He went to check out the mushrooms growing out of a root next to the house, and that happens to be a fire ant nest, too. He came in crying, plopped himself on Heidi’s lap, and it took us a moment to see what was going on. Once we saw the ants, Heidi realized they were crawling all over her by association, so I got Bennett into the kitchen as fast as I could, and Heidi ran to get the ants off of her pants, but it was already too late. One bit her hip. Two little bites. Bennett got at least 20 across his hands and legs, and they swelled up a bit, but that went away almost immediately. Heidi, on the other hand… Well, here are some pictures for comparison.

Bennett — little bit of mottled color, few spots. This is at least a dozen bites, poor guy.

Heidi — note the size of that one welt and the size of her finger. Two bites!

I gave them both some antihistamine and hydrocortisone cream to help with the reactions. Hoping Bennett won’t itch himself awake tonight, and Heidi has already konked out here at 9 from the drugs. But when she told me that she was really allergic to fire ants, I guess I didn’t fully realize just how bad she meant. I sat in a fire ant mound when I was three, and my reaction, while in the moment was filled with howls of pain, didn’t persist — much like Bennett’s. Heidi expects her swelling to last for at least a week. Small wonder she doesn’t like ants.

Last thing:

This may be the cutest minute of video you will ever see. At least today. Heidi ran for the camera as soon as she noticed Emy was saying, “shoes.” And we have Bennett on tape saying, “mama.” (finally) Then Ben and Emy fight over the little view-screen so they can watch themselves. And finally, Emy starts shooting the camera some seriously dirty looks for no reason whatsoever. Totally cute, and it clocks in at just over one minute. ~2MB.

How’s that? Rambling enough to keep you from missing Heidi too much?

Heidi adds - counted the bites on Bennett’s worse leg this morning. Swelling went down, easier to identify the red spots now. 47 on one leg. Then I quit counting… Also, camera explanation - our video camera has a screen that you can flip out and turn around so the kids can see themselves being taped. It’s to the left of the camera which is why they are knocking each other out of the way getting close - they were fighting to see themselves in the screen.